BloodRayne 2: A Marked Improvement for The Series.

It’s been awhile since the last time we’ve seen Rayne. This game is set in the modern era. Having rid the world of her father, she has moved onto bumping off her siblings. As it turns out this is a pretty sizable group. You may be wondering how big of a group. Well, its big enough to found a secret society with some pretty sinister goals. They want to release “The Shroud”, a cloud of blood that lets vampires walk around when it is sunny out. To save humanity from becoming 24/7 happy meals on legs, Rayne must stop them.

In this game Rayne can avail herself of a wide variety of tools to slaughter her enemies. The game developes a nice mix of distances and hand to hand (or hand to fang) weaponry for your killing pleasure.

Kicks

It turns out that Rayne has some pretty powerful legs. Knock the stuffing out of your enemies with this basic attack.

The Arm Blades

Yes, Rayne’s signature weapon is back and this time around you can make some pretty powerful combos with the blades and the kicks.

Chains

This may not seem like much of a weapon at first, but the first time you grab an enemy at a distance and chuck him across the room you’ll understand the joy in using the chains.

The Carpathian Dragons

A pair of blood-powered guns. Just be careful - when you run out of ammo they start to drain Rayne.

Target mode

Target your enemy while using the blades and you will be able to use more dodges and attacks.

Execution moves

These are visually interesting ways to watch Rayne finish an enemy. There are a total of 12 that range from a quick stab to total dismemberment.

The puzzles in this game come in two main varieties. There are the obstacle courses that you will be familiar with already and what I call “jam puzzles”. Let’s say that a wood chipper is in your way. You can’t go over it or push it. How do you get it out of the way? You feed it enemies of course! Eventually the machine will jam and you can get through. The majority of puzzles however will be about jumping.

The keyboard controls can be a bit akward, so if you have a game pad whip it out. Your life will be much simpler. The one control feature this reviewer enjoys is the camera controls. They are very simple and you can change views without having to nudge an analogue stick during combat. The key-based switch is much easier to manage. Of course, this is a personal preference and some of you may miss the old method.

Graphics is one of the places where the original title shined, and BloodRayne 2 continues on this tradition. The world creates a great “old school Dracula meets modern metro" feel and characters are for the most part very detailed. You almost feel bad killing them - almost.